


The Tenth Reaping

by vipsaniasickle



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins
Genre: District Four, The Reaping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 16:28:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30024573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vipsaniasickle/pseuds/vipsaniasickle
Summary: District Four's reaping for the Tenth Annual Hunger Games, mainly by Mizzen's perspective.
Relationships: Coral & Mizzen (Hunger Games)





	The Tenth Reaping

**Author's Note:**

> (A.N. i like to think mizzen is mags' little brother. don't ask. she's "maggie" in this -- name she went by when she was younger. or something. i think about district four back then way too often.. the mayor (corina cates!!), the people, the traditions... i have way too many thoughts. so here's this even tho no 1 asked)

mizzen stared at his mother’s shirt collar as she adjusted his own. she insisted on touching up his outfit before he stepped off of the front porch, as she always does with him, letting his sister go on ahead without the extra tending to. “it’s fixed!” he sighed, annoyed, taking a step back away from her to keep her from running over the same crease in his collar for a fifth time. “alright,” she responded, her voice calm and sweet as she reached out to brush the hair framing his face one more time. he let her push the curls back without another complaint, and once she’d taken her hands away, he ran down the porch steps two at a time and made to catch up with maggie. 

once he’d reached his sister’s side and fallen into pace with her, he brought a hand up to brush back his hair, disrupting however his mother had left it. 

“for you.” maggie handed him his identification: a thick piece of paper, worn at the corners, with an old picture of him in the corner and his legal information typed in all capital letters beside it. he took the paper, thanked her, and looked at it, but gave up studying the thing when he started to fall behind her. she’d always walked faster than him, and he usually didn’t mind — walked by himself, as fast as he felt like — but today he wanted to stay right at her side. 

the check-in was confusing and disorganized, as it was the year before. he split from his sister when the crowd of kids had to divide into the two gendered sections in the center of town, and he filed in with the other boys his age, facing the stage that had been placed at the head of the justice building. two rows ahead, he spotted a friend and weaved his way through the crowd to stand beside him. tiller was thin and redheaded, like half of district four’s boys, and was the son of a shop owner. he was mizzen’s closest friend. they spoke for a bit, nervously trying to fill the time until the mayor took the stage.

when corina cates stepped to the front of the stage, most of the noise had settled, and when she addressed the district’s citizens the town square went completely silent. the reaping wasn’t a particularly fancy affair beyond the developing tradition of dressing formally for them. mayor cates was in a nice, new dress—notably more professional than her typical attire—although she was standing on a temporarily placed stage without a podium or microphone, alone other than the two small tables that held the fish crates, filled with name slips. 

“okay,” the mayor said, her voice a regular tone before she raised it to a speaking-to-a-crowd level for her next piece: “good morning. we all know what we’re here for, so… i’ll just get on with it.” she took the event with a casual tone. at the beginning, nine years prior, the reaping was more grave. it was dark, and handled as such. over the years, the mayor had begun to address it more and more relaxedly, more simply, as it started to feel like a cruel part of life that had to be accepted. most of the kids still fidgeted in place, rightfully anxious, but mayor cates was past letting it bother her. she stepped to her left and dropped her hand into the girls’ crate. 

“our girl,” she fished around in the box only for a moment before pulling a folded slip out of it and opening it. “coral mcnamara.” mizzen filled with relief in one instant, and in the next, his heart dropped, heavier with anxiety than it’d been before the name was announced. it wasn’t his sister, which was music to his ears, but it was a girl he knew. since he was old enough to attend, he’d known the kids who were reaped, but just from seeing them occasionally in the heart of the district. it was never a kid his age, never a kid from school, never a friend, never someone he was really familiar with… until now. he wasn’t friends with coral. she was three years older, a girl… but he knew her. they lived near one another, worked in the same marina. he’d played games with her family on their porch the summer before, delivered a note to her brother for her last fall, and had wished her a happy birthday in the winter. he knew her. 

he was distracted by coral’s name being called. his attention was off of the stage and on the crowd of girls, right where it was parting for coral to make her way to the stage. he was captivated, as obsessed with getting his eyes on her as the girls were, who’d already avoided their shot at death. the rest of the boys, except him and coral’s brothers, still had their eyes on the mayor as she crossed the stage to the left and addressed the boys’ crate. 

he was leaning to the left, so entirely distracted by the thought of seeing someone he’d grown up near on that stage that tiller noticed and nudged him with his elbow. the jab to his side made mizzen bring his eyes back to the stage, right as the mayor dug her hand into the sea of papers. “and our boy,” she unfolded the slip, “mizzen flannagan.” he was frozen in place, his expression nothing but pure shock. for what felt like minutes, but was really only about five seconds, he couldn’t move. he was completely paralyzed with fear, only moving when a boy behind him gave him a solid shove and he had to move his legs to catch himself from falling. the push set him in motion, and as always, the crowd parted for him to make his way to the front. he lost every sense of feeling — there was no weight in his chest, and no sense of anxiety or worry. it was too much to process, and every step felt like a dream as he made it to the corner of the stage and peacekeepers got their hands on him. 

one grabbed his arms, handling him roughly, binding his wrists in handcuffs in front of himself as they tugged him up staircase of the stage. he was placed in front of the mayor, who stood center stage, arms tensely at her sides as she stared wordlessly into the capitol’s broadcasting camera. she said nothing, simply glaring at whoever might be watching from the “gem of panem”. mizzen looked at coral, forced to stand in front of the crowd right beside him, but she didn’t meet his gaze. she was looking past the crowd, beyond the building tops, out at the sea. while the mayor started on her closing statements, coral’s expression remained firm and unfazed. he could barely hear mayor cates talking to the crowd of kids. the settling shock and the blood rushing in his ears left him half deaf. mizzen joined coral in looking beyond the crowd, towards the water. 

the ocean was deep, dangerous, and mesmerizing, and he took in for the last time the way it seemed to go on and on forever until it met with the sky, knowing he might never see it again. his last look at the horizon was cut short by a peacekeeper grabbing him by the arm for the second time and tugging him to the back of the stage. the rough handling snapped him out of the muffled, dreamlike state this time, and as he was being pulled towards the staircase he could hear his name shouted out from the crowd. it was his sister, he could recognize her voice. she screamed his name once, loud in the square’s stark silence, in some thoughtless but natural attempt to reach him and protect him from what was happening. he strained to turn his head, to find her in the crowd, but he couldn’t fight the peacekeeper’s grip. they started down the stairs. 

he tried to yell “goodbye” back to her, but he was breathless and couldn’t form the word. he didn’t have a second chance before they were closing the justice building doors, cutting him off from the rest of the district. the moment was a whirlwind. a second after he’d been pulled into the justice building, he was pushed to the back of a holding cell. coral was shoved in after him, and when they slammed the cell door on her, she clung to the bars and shouted at the men on the other side of them. one of the peacekeepers raised his gun from his hip. she took the hint and backed off, stepping back until she was at the end of the concrete room, where mizzen stood blank faced and shell-shocked. 

in the entrance of the building, the peacekeepers joined the mayor and started talking, discussing the status of the train that would be taking them away. the two of them weren’t being listened to, already half forgotten about in the dark, cold corner of the room, stuck behind bars for the first time, but not the last. 

“we’re gonna die,” mizzen said plainly, his eyes completely out of focus and locked on the front of the cell. 

“no, we’re not,” she answered. it was objectively untrue — at least one of them would die, best case — but at that point, she refused to accept what was going to happen. and somehow it made him feel a little better.


End file.
